Stumbling upon the gods – the usual characters of dreams

The usual characters in the life of any person are the Mother and the Father, the Sister and the Brother; the Grandmother and the Grandfather; the Daughter and the Son.

Tsar Dadon meets the Shemakha queen (illustration to The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, 1906)

Other frequent host of relationships that tie our life with society’s include as well: the Boss, the Celebrity and the Actor, the Hero and the Heroine, the Witch, the In-laws and the Step family. And then, there are the prominent roles like the Teacher and the Nurse.

The gods are expression of those characters, they are at the core of our ideations and reflections– the Mother and the Daughter, the Sisters, the Brother, the Hunters, the Father, the Old man and the boy, the Nurse and the Nymph, the Lover and the Warrior, the Blacksmith, the Amazon.

These characters and forms are at the root of our psychological, emotional and relational world. As the gods that live their myths, they show us the patterns that weave our lives.

Through understanding the pathos of the Gods and the stories in the Myths we can grasp the form of our own patterns, our own thinking, feeling and doing. These archetypal forms provide us with ways to reflect on our own emotions and attitudes, memories and motives. They hold pieces of our lives that when observed against the wider canvas of their mythology, allow us to meditate and ponder, conceive and imagine, project and desire.

Hermes the guide

In our own lives this is tremendously helpful, because we draw on the experience of the million year old human being, on the countless times these patterns have been lived through in different guises and conditions.

In one way of looking at these images we can say they are the face of instinct, but also a deeper and higher power which we can’t really explain away.